Lancashire HotPot from frozen

September 20, 2011

I was recently challenged by The NewIceAge on twitter to cook a recipe using only frozen foods and as I love a challenge I said I would give it a try. The New Ice Age is a website dedicated to cooking and using frozen food so if you are looking for facts and information on frozen food this is a great place to look. Frozen vegetables can actually contain more nutrients than fresh vegetables as they are frozen straight after being picked so it can actually be healthier as well as being convenient. The other good thing is that if you have a lot of different ingredients in your freezer you are never short of something to whip up for a meal.

This is the recipe I tried:

Lancashire Hotpot

As you can see from the photo it looks rather nice. I was hoping mine would turn out as well.

Ingredients

900 g/ 2lbs frozen diced lamb shoulder

a handful of diced frozen onions

half a bag of frozen carrots

1 pint of lamb stock (or any brown stock)

2 oz butter

900g/2lbs frozen potatoes

1 teaspoon fresh thyme.

Method

Make sure you have defrosted the lamb thoroughly then cut into slices.

Chop the potatoes into thick slices

Butter the casserole dish and line it with potato slices. Season with salt, pepper and thyme

Add the lamb, diced onions and carrots on top.

Add another layer of potatoes overlapping each other. Coat these with butter, salt and pepper.

Add the stock till it reaches the top layer of potatoes.

Cook in an oven preheated to 180C for 2 hours with the lid on the casserole dish. After this time remove the lid and cook for another 30-40 minutes until the potatoes are brown and tender.

This seems easy enough so I went and got all the ingredients as specified. Normally I would not use frozen onions as I have lots of fresh ones lying around the house, but the frozen onions are already diced for you which prevents tears! I definitely would keep some of these in for future for those times I run out. The recipe was really easy to make, the only problem I had was cutting the frozen potatoes into slices. The slices I made turned out quite thick, so I would definitely let your potatoes defrost for a bit before trying to do this or buy sliced ones.

I was really pleased with how it turned out.

It tasted nice as well, the perfect meal for an autumn day. It is really good that it can be prepared from frozen food as you can do your shopping in advance and not have to worry that the ingredients may go off before you use them. If you are always rushing around like a headless chicken, like me, between work and family, it is great to have meals like this you can prepare from the freezer. I will definitely be having a look at some of the other ideas and trying them out.